Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 52
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The
AFRICOM
Queen
Brian J. Dunn
U
nited States Africa Command (USAFRICOM)
advances American interests in Africa by
deploying elements of U.S. national power in
a persistent manner. It seeks to prevent problems from
growing to direct-threat proportions by enhancing the
ability of states and regional or international organizations to promote security, stability, and prosperity.
USAFRICOM (also known as AFRICOM) needs
cost-effective and nontraditional naval platforms—
auxiliary cruisers—to project U.S. Army and civilian
interagency assets (supplemented by nongovernmental
organizations, when appropriate) around the African
continent for peacetime engagement and crisis response.
In a June 2015 article for Signal Magazine, former
U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis makes a case for
increased use of the Navy’s afloat forward staging bases
(AFSBs), which he says could fulfill the need for offshore bases to support missions in USAFRICOM. He
suggests commercial options for creating more of this
type of asset: “Given the uses for the concept, it is worth
considering any commercial version that could be purchased for even less than the military’s AFSBs. While
they would have somewhat less capability, their numbers would provide far more flexibility in distributing
them among the regional combatant commanders.”1
Similarly, modularized auxiliary cruisers using civilian container ships taken into government service under
contract, using primarily military crews and equipped
with an array of weapon and support systems housed
in commercial shipping containers, could function as
mobile platforms for projecting and supporting Army
military missions and civilian developmental and humanitarian initiatives around Africa. In a tight budget
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environment, when the Navy prioritizes battle fleet
assets for U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), which
has more sophisticated naval challenges, and to U.S.
Central Command (USCENTCOM), which is carrying
out ongoing military campaigns, modularized auxiliary
cruisers are the asset USAFRICOM needs.
The Challenges of AFRICOM
To cope with a full range of missions across a
large, diverse continent, USAFRICOM sets forth a
May-June 2016 MILITARY REVIEW